The Dork of Cork.

Frank Bois is a dwarf, 43 inches tall and 43 years old. For as long as he can remember, Frank has looked to the night sky for company; to the splendor of comets and constellations and lunar eclipses, which he studies from his rooftop in a down-at-the-heels section of Cork, Ireland. Isolated by his deformity, Frank has led a solitary, lonely life. As an adult, he finds the prospect of romance---or for that matter, any sexual encounter--unlikely.

We meet Frank when he is on the verge of great fame, having written a much-anticipated memoir, soon to be published by Penguin. Called Nightstalk, his book is, he tells us, "a work on the night sky, descriptive and poetic, with a generous lacing of personal history." This history includes his peculiar upbringing by a distant, troubled mother who, as a child, witnessed an unspeakable tragedy in Nazi-occupied France. Also central to his tale is the influence of three men, his mother's lovers, who become, at various times, his surrogate fathers. "It is because of my deformity that the publisher has such confidence in the marketability of my book," Frank is compelled to add.

The fictional book within a book provides the underlying conceit for The Dork of Cork, an enchanting novel by Chet Raymo, a professor of physics at Stonehill College in Massachusetts, a science columnist for the Boston Globe, and the author of 365 Starry Nights and The Soul of the Night. Set almost entirely in and around Cork, Frank begins his story at the end of World War II, when he is conceived by his stowaway French mother, the beautiful Bernadette, aboard a U.S.-bound troop cartier which stops in Cork Harbor for provisioning. Apprehended by immigration officials, Bernadette manages to escape into the streets of Cork, making the city her home.

Months later, Jack Kelly, the immigration officer who first interviewed Bernadette, sees her on the street and attends to her baby's birth: "...the midwife pulled from Bernadette's womb the unfortunate child, a squashed sort of thing with legs and arms disproportionately small compared to the torso, like sprouts budding from the eyes of a potato....He saw the fright in the face of the girl who was, after all, not much older than his daughter.... 'Tis a lad,' he said, beaming into the imploring eyes of the exhausted girl."

Soon after, Jack and Bernadette become lovers. This is a role entirely out of character for Kelly, faithful father of six, and the affair is cut short when his daughter Emma witnesses their lovemaking. Still, he continues to act as a friend to Bernadette and a father figure to Frank. He also introduces Frank to what soon becomes his passion: star gazing. And Jack's daughter Emma comes, for Frank, to embody the stars' physical beauty and unreachable distance.

I admit, I was leery of reading a book about a little person set in Ireland, especially given the off-beat title. But this is not, in particular, a book about Ireland. Rather, the country offers a fitting haunt for one such as Frank, providing a sufficient number of dour dark settings for the novel's black humor.

Despite Frank's deformities (and Frank does feel he's deformed), Raymo imbues him with such humanity that he avoids a common failing of novelists: turning characters into bizarre, nasty caricatures, with actions so unbelievable that it's hard for the reader to understand, let alone sympathize, with them. Likewise, Bernadette might be distant and self-absorbed, but Raymo has taken pains to see that we understand how her experiences in war-torn France damaged her ability to love. Even the sinister Hans Scrieber, who seduces, then discards Emma, leaving her completely unhinged, is a unique villain. It seems Scrieber can only produce his amazing scientific theories when inspired by a mistress. His liaison with Emma nets him the Nobel Prize! There are a host of other likable, slightly dally characters, among them Roger Manning, the Protestant curate who writes erotic poetry and dreams of domesticating Bernadette, and Handy Paige, the half-soused literary agent who never fails to remind Frank that dwarfism sells.

Throughout, Raymo demonstrates a scientist's talent for order by intertwining Frank's first-person narration with that of the book within a book without confusing the reader. And, by contrasting the beauty of the heavens--here Raymo's writing can be stunning--with more earthy flaws, he continually forces the reader to examine "how beauty and hurt get jumbled up together." At one point, Raymo, who has a taste for the brutal, manages to force this issue upon the reader, through a conversation between Frank and his editor: "Tell me, Jennifer, do you think that--hypothetically--do you think that you could fall in love with me?" "...I would like to be the kind of person that could fall in love with you, but I'm not," she responds.

"If it's any consolation, Jennifer, I don't blame you. I'm not that kind of person either. What is beautiful is always more desirable than what is not beautiful."

If I have one complaint with the Dork of Cork, it is that the ending is a little too neat, too precious. To reveal it would spoil everything, but I wish Raymo hadn't succumbed to the need to put everything aright in the end. Still, it is a small criticism for a book alive with so many enduring characters.